Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 100. (Budapest, 2004)

SZILÁGYI, JÁNOS GYÖRGY: "La gigantesque horreur de l'ombre Herculéenne" Apulian Red-Figure Vases Decorated in Superposed Colours

The Department of Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts managed to acquire a cup (fig. 12-13), purportedly" belonging to a repatriated Hungarian emigrant, at a Budapest auction - an unusual event.

3 The shape of the vessel is well known in Attic pottery. The shallow cup curves smoothly upwards to the rim, which is offset only on the inside; at the bottom there is a slight moulding on the outside attaching the body of the vessel to the ring foot, which is proportioned by two groves running parallel and has a concave underside. All these features are characteristic of the "delicate class" of stemless cups.

4 The decoration of the underside of the foot also follows Attic models with the three concentric circles on the reserved underside. Apart from its clay colour, the fact that the cup is not Attic but simply the popular South Italian copy

5 of the shape is substantiated by the figured ornamentation of the inside: in the tondo, surrounded by two narrow concentric circles, there is the silhouette figure of a dancing man turning left, painted in added-orange. His two arms flung out, his naked body is partly covered by a mantle, the ends of which hang down in folds from his arms - the scheme appearing in Athens even on blackfigure vases was popular in the early period of red-figure vase-painting and well known in Etruria too.

6 No internal details are indicated; the figure is painted with a light hand, somewhat carelessly; the foot stepping forward reaches through the inner circle. Improvisatory character notwithstanding, the drawing stands not isolated in South Italian pottery decorated in applied colours. Comparable first and foremost is a kylix of similar shape preserved in a German private collection: it depicts a dancing female figure in its tondo (fig. 14).

7 A black silhouette drawing in the medallion of a kylix that surfaced at a London auction might belong to the same circle (fig. 15),

8 but without the knowledge of the shape of the entire vessel this is not more than mere speculation, which is not disproved by the application of the black-figure technique in itself. On the other hand, a whole and three fragmentary cups obvi3 Inv. no. 97.2.A., night: 6,1 cm, diameter at mouth: 20 cm, diameter at foot: 10,1 cm, reddish-brown clay, metallic black painting, light-red added colour. 4 B. A. Sparkes and L. Talcott, Black and Plain Pottery (The Athenian Agora, vol. XII), Princeton 1970, 102-5. 5 On its appearance in South Italy: J.-P. Morel, Céramique campanienne: les formes, Paris and Rome 1981, 295, Ser. 4221, pl. 120; M. Giorgi, in Forentum, vol. I (Le necropoli di Lavello), eds. M. Giorgi et al., Venosa 1988, 234-36, type 2.1. 6 On Attic red-figure vases, see G. Prudhommeau, La danse grecque antique, Paris 1965, pi. 119, figs. 847 and 848, 120, fig. 849. In Etruria, see, e.g., the dancers of the Tarquinian Tomba del Triclinio, Tomba dei Leopardi, Tomba Querciola I and Tomba di Orfeo ed Euridice, or the black-figure hydria of the former Pomerance Collection (The Pomerance Collection of Ancient Art. Cat. of an exhibition held at The Brooklyn Museum..., ed. J. 1. Keith, New York 1966, frontispiece, and for this: N. J. Spivey, The Micali Painter and his Followers, Oxford 1987, 45-46.) 7 K. Schauenburg, Studien zur unteritalischen Vasenmalerei, vol. III, Kiel 2001, 38 and fig. 193. 8 Christies South Kensington, 7 November 2001, 107, no. 260 ('Boeotian, end of 6th c. - beginning of 5

th c.'); the 'phallos' is perhaps rather the edge of the mantle.